Twitter text commands are words you can type in order to get Twitter to perform a specific action like turning notifications off or on for specific users or for general messages to your phone. Some of the Twitter commands were pretty useful in the early days of Twitter but now that there are many Twitter clients which can perform similar actions, they don’t seem to be used by many people anymore. Apart from ‘@username’ or ‘d’ of course.

Still, if you’re using a mobile device like your phone or your favorite app, these text commands are a very quick way to perform specific tasks effectively. Here is a list of the twitter text comamnds, taken from Twitter’s support page.

Turning Twitter off and on: device notifications

ON: turns ALL phone notifications on.

OFF: turns ALL phone notifications off.

STOP, QUIT: stops all messages to your phone immediately

ON username: turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, ON alissa.

OFF username: turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, OFF blaine.

FOLLOW username: this command allows you to start receiving notifications for a specific person on your phone. Example: follow jeremy

LEAVE username: this command allows you to stop receiving notifications for a specific person on your phone. Example: leave benfu

Fun Stuff: friends, favorites, and stats!
There’s more to Twitter than OFF and ON! Use the commands below to send private messages, mark updates as favorites, or even remind someone to update their Twitter page if you’re wondering what they’re doing!

@username + message
directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.
Example: @meangrape I love that song too!

D username + message
sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you’re there?

WHOIS username
retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois jack

GET username
retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get goldman

Using on/off username from your phone only stops notifications to the place the command comes from; you’ll still collect a person’s updates on the web.

Using follow/leave username from your phone is the same as using on/off username.

Following someone from a phone for the first time will also cause you to follow them on the web.

There is no way to stop following a person on the web without visiting their profile and removing them. The off, leave, stop, and quit commands will only disable updates for the device(s) from which they were sent.

You don’t have to use ON/OFF username from the phone, you can also set individual notifications from a person’s profile page, or check your following page and manage all phone notification settings there.